


strings

by thepensword



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Introspection, POV Second Person, noelle stevenson came for my whole life boi i die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 15:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16747048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: It's always been just you and her, but now she's gone, and you don't know what to do.





	strings

**Author's Note:**

> i just binge watched this show in one sitting and i'm having some emotions so bear with me. i don't actually know what this is.
> 
> tw: mentions of abuse, nightmares relating to trauma, feelings of abandonment, feelings of inferiority.

It’s always been you and her.

(She left you.)

It’s always been the two of you. It’s always been her hand on your arm, her name in your mouth. That name tastes sharp, now, like when you run your tongue along the edges of your teeth; it hurts in a way that almost feels good. You need to hurt. You don’t want to forget her.

(She left you. She means nothing anymore. Stop chasing her.)

It’s always been just you and her, is the thing. You, curled up at the foot of her bed, her breathing a steady, reassuring constant. You don’t often dream—there's not much here worth dreaming about—but when you do, you dream of lightning traveling up your spine and Shadow Weaver’s glaring mask and the mad glint of her eyes the one time you’d seen them. You don’t often dream, but when you do, you wake up with a gasp and calm yourself down with the sound of her breathing.

You wake up, and you do not hear her breathing. She is not there beneath the steady rise and fall of the covers. She is not there to twist tiny braids into your wild mane of hair, to chide you gently for being insubordinate, to cuddle up alongside you when the shaking comes and won’t go away.  _ I’m fine,  _ you say through clenched teeth—or you would, if there was anyone here to hear it.

No one else cares about you. It’s just you and her. Her, protecting you, loving—

She promised.

(She lied.)

You want her near you again. You want her back so badly that it aches. So you yell a lot and break things and when you find her, she’s different. She doesn’t want to come back. She’s content to just leave you.

She would never leave you. She promised.

So she’s changed. And it’s not her. Those “friends” of her corrupted her, somehow. They twisted her mind, turned her into something else, something strange and terrible with flowing hair and a giant sword. Something that looks at you with her eyes and breaks her promise with every word she speaks.  _ Come with me,  _ she says, and you don’t know how to tell her that you can’t. You can’t, because this is the only place you’ve ever known, and she’s the only one you’ve ever—

So you capture her friends. They'll pay for taking her from you, you think.

You dance with her the same way you used to fight. Play battles as children, training as you grew—you’d knock her down, she’d knock  _ you  _ down, and always she’d win. That stung, sometimes, but she’d smile and help you up and it didn’t matter that you were inferior, because she was there to protect you, to cover up your flaws.

Nobody else mattered, as long as you had her. So you hook your fingers around her waist and dig your claws just slightly into the fabric of her dress and pull her face so close to yours that you can feel her breath on your skin. And you watch her, then. You watch her eyes. Is she still in there?

(She’s gone. She’s not yours, not anymore.)

You grab her arm tight enough to sting. You dig your claws in like maybe they’ll catch, maybe you’ll be able to drag her home. You scream at her and knock her aside in the hopes that maybe she’ll wake up.  _ Please,  _ you think, at the start.  _ Come home. _

Near the end, you stop caring. She’s been changed. 

You let her fall. Her pleading gaze will be a new feature in your churning nightmares. You wake up and reach for her, and then scream into your fists because she’s gone. She’s gone. She broke her promise. She doesn’t care anymore, so why do you?

You wish you could claw her out of your mind. You get in a tank and lead an army to blow up that castle, that damn castle that took her from you. Somewhere deep in your mind, in a place where you’re still naive, you think that maybe smashing the crystal and killing the princesses will bring her back to you. Maybe she’s under some sort of curse. Maybe—

But the princesses win, and the crystal is intact, and you run away with your tail between your legs.

She watches you leave. 

It’s always been you and her. But she left, and she didn’t take you. And then you left, and she didn’t stop you. But she promised, didn’t she? Did that promise mean nothing? 

What are promises on the tongue of a traitor?

You know her, though, or you thought you did. She’s all you had. She was your everything, and you thought you were hers, but maybe—

Maybe you should give it up. Maybe you should stop caring. Why can’t you stop caring?

(She’s all you ever had. You need her. You hate her.)

You love her. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i've been in a car all day and i'm half asleep so i apologize if that was completely incomprehensible. i had emotions and they needed to be written down. 
> 
> if you did like it, drop me a comment or visit me on [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com)


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